Rated 4 out of 5 by banc What you might not know about Nutanix that makes it so unique Valuable Features:Some years ago when we started working with Nutanix the solution was essentially a stable, user friendly hyper converged solution offering a less future rich version of what is now called the distributed storage fabric. This is what competing solutions typically offer today and for many customers it isn't easy to understand the added value (I would argue they should in fact be a requirement) Nutanix offers today in comparison to other approaches.Over the years Nutanix has added lots of enterprise functionality like deduplication, compression, erasure coding, snapshots, (a)-sync replication and so on. While they are very useful, scale extremely well on Nutanix and offer VM granular configuration (if you don't care about granularity do it cluster wide by default). It is other, maybe less obvious features or I should say design principles which should interest most customers a lot:Upgradeable with a single clickThis was introduced a while ago, I believe around version 4 of the product. At first is was mainly used to upgrade the Nutanix software (Acropolis OS or AOS) but today we use it for pretty much anything from the hypervisor to the system BIOS, the disk firmware and also to upgrade sub components of the Acropolis OS. There is for example a standardized system check (around 150 checks) called NCC (Nutanix Cluster Check) which can be upgrade throughout the cluster with a single click independent of AOS. The One-Click process also allows you to use a granular hypervisor upgrade such as an ESXi offline bundle (could be a ptach release). The Nutanix cluster will then take care of the rolling reboot, vMotion etc. to happen in a fully hyper-converged fashion (e.g. don't reboot multiple nodes at the same time). If you think how this compares to a traditional three tier architecture (including converged generation 1) you do have a much simpler and well tested workflow which is what you use by default. And yes it does automatic prechecks and also ensures what you are updating is on the Nutanix compatibility matrix. It is also worth mentioning that upgrading AOS (the complete Nutanix software layer) doesn't require a host reboot since it isn't part of the hypervisor but installed as a VSA (regular VM). It also doesn't require any VMs to migrate away from the node/host during and after upgrade (I love that fact since bigger cluster tend to have some hickups when using vMotion and other similar techniques especially if you have 100 VMs on a host) not to mentioned the network impact.Linearly scalableNutanix has several unique capabilities to ensure linear scalability. The key ingredients are data locality, a fully distributed meta data layer as well as granular data management. The first is important especially when you grow your cluster. It is true that 10G networks offer very low latency but the overhead will count towards every single read IO so you should consider the sum of them (and there is a lot of read IOs you get out of every single Nutanix node!). If you look at what development is currently ongoing in the field of persistent flash storage you will see that the network overhead will only become more important going forward. The second key point is the fully distributed meta data database. Every node holds a part of the database (the meta data belonging to it's currently local data for the most part and replica information from other nodes). All meta data is stored on at least three nodes for redundancy (each node writes to it's neighbor nodes in a ring structure, there are no meta data master nodes). No matter how many nodes your cluster holds (or will hold) there is always a defined number of nodes (three or five) involved when a meta data update is performed (a lookup/read is typically local). I like to describe this architecture using Big O notation where in this case you can think of it as O(n) and since there are no master node there aren't any bottlenecks at scale. The last key point is the fact that Nutanix acts as an object storage (you work with so called Vdisks) but the objects are split in small pieces (called extends) and distributed throughout the cluster with one copy residing on the local node and each replica residing on other cluster nodes. If your VM writes three blocks to its virtual disk they will all end up on the local SSD and the replicas (for redundancy) will be spread out in the cluster for fast replication (they can go to three different nodes in the cluster avoiding hot spots). If you move your VM to another node, data locality (for read access) will automatically be built again (of course only for the extends your VM currently uses). You might now think that you don't want to migrate that extends from the previous to the now local node but if you think about the fact that the extend will have to be fetched anyhow then why not saving it locally and serve it directly from the local SSD going forward instead of discarding it and reading it over the network every single time. This is possible because the data structure is very granular. If you would have to migrate the whole Vdisk (e.g. VMDK) because this is the way your storage layer saves its underlying data then you simply wouldn't do it (imagine vSphere DRS migrates your VMs around and your cluster would need to constantly migrate the whole VMDK(s)). If you wonder how this all matters when a rebuild (disk failure, node failure) is required then there is good news too! Nutanix immediately starts self healing (rebuild lost replica extends) whenever a disk or node is lost. During a rebuild all nodes are potentially used as source and target to rebuild the data. Since extends are used (not big objects) data is evenly spread out within the cluster. A bigger cluster will increase the probability of a disk failure but the speed of a rebuild is higher since a bigger cluster has more participating nodes. Furthermore a rebuild of cold data (on SATA) will happen directly on all remaining SATA drives (doesn't use your SSD tier) within the cluster since Nutanix can directly address all disks (and disk tiers) within the cluster.PredictableThanks to data locality a large portion of your IOs (all reads, can be 70% or more) are served from local disks and therefore only impact the local node. While writes will be replicated for data redundancy they will have second priority over local writes of the destination node(s). This gives you a high degree of predictability and you can plan with a certain amount of VMs per node and you can be confident that this will be reproducible when adding new nodes to the cluster. As I mentioned above the architecture doesn't read all data constantly over the network and uses meta data master nodes to track where everything is stored. Looking at other hyper converged architectures you won't get that kind of assurance especially when you scale your infrastructure and the network won't keep up with all read IOs and meta data updates going over the network. With Nutanix a VM can't take over the whole clusters performance. It will have an influence on other VMs on the local node since they share the local hot tier (SSD) but that's much better compared to today's noisy neighbor and IO blender issues with external storage arrays. If you should have too little local hot storage (SSD) your VMs are allowed to consume remote SSD with secondary priority over the other node's local VMs. This means no more data locality but is better than accessing local SATA instead. Once you move away some VMs or the load on the VM gets smaller you automatically get your data locality back. As described further down Nutanix can tell you exactly what virtual disk uses how much local (and possibliy remote) data, you get full transparency there as well.Extremely fastI think it is known that hyper converged systems offer very high storage performance. Not much to add here but to say that it is indeed extremely fast compared to traditional storage arrays. And yes a full flash Nutanix cluster is as fast (if not faster) than an external full flash storage array with the added benefit that you read from you local SSD and don't have to traverse the network/SAN to get it (that and of course all other hyper convergence benefits). Performance was the area where Nutanix had the most focus when releasing 4.6 earlier this year. The great flexibility of working with small blocks (extends) rather than the whole object on the storage layer comes at the price of much greater meta data complexity since you need to track all these small entities through out the cluster. To my understanding Nutanix invested a great deal of engineering to make their meta data layer extremely efficient to be able to even beat the performance of an object based implementation. As a partner we regularly conduct IO tests in our lab and at our customers and it was very impressive to see how all existing customers could benefit from 30-50% better performance by simply applying the latest software (using one-click upgrade of course).IntelligentSince Nutanix has full visibility into every single virtual disks of every single VM it also has lots of ways to optimize how it deals with our data. This is not only the simple random vs sequential way of processing data but it allows to not have one application take over all system performance and let others starve (to name one example). During a support case we can see all sorts of crazy information (I have a storage background so I can get pretty excited about this) like where exactly your applications consumes it's resources (local, remote disks). What block size is used random/sequential, working set size (hot data) and lots more. All with single virtual disk granularity. At some point they were even thinking at making a tool which would look inside your VM and tell you what files (actually sub file level) are currently hot because the data is there and just needs to be visualized.E...Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:We are a Partner for three years based in Switzerland.The author of this review previously worked five years at a large storage vendor as System Engineer specialized in Storage, Virtualization and VCE converged infrastructure. May 1, 2016

Rated 4 out of 5 by Charley Hibbard The converged storage infrastructure is a great benefit that removes the necessity of a separate storage network. Valuable Features:The converged storage infrastructure is a great benefit that removes the necessity of a separate storage network.The web-based management portal (Prism) is very robust and easy to understand.There is very little to manually configure, for the Nutanix or (in our case) VMware OS, once the scripted installation has completed.Very knowledgeable support engineers.Improvements to My Organization:For us, the Nutanix 3060 was a fantastic solution because it was an exact fit for the purpose of refreshing our hypervisor (VMware) infrastructure. For example, our existing VMware licensing allowed for a total of 8 sockets, which fit perfectly since the 3060 consists of (4) nodes with (2) sockets each. Our fiscal planning called for the replacement of two of our hypervisor hosts and an HP P2000 G3 SAN however, we were able to justify a Nutanix 3060 appliance due to the hyper-converged features. We also went from a 1G iSCSI storage network to 10G and we didn't need to purchase a 10G switch for the storage traffic since we connected the 10G nics in the Nutanix nodes directly to our end-of-rack switches. The simplification, cost-savings, and across the board performance increase made the Nutanix a great decision.Room for Improvement:The Nutanix uses controller VMs for disk I/O, metadata, etc. and they can consume significant resources so be sure to account for the additional CPU and memory the controllers will need. There is one controller VM per node so Nutanix and/or your reseller can help you calculate what additional resources you'll need.The Nutanix OS (NOS) is proprietary so, out of the box, you will need a Nutanix Support Engineer's (SE) help to configure the appliance. This doesn't take long and I haven't needed to make any adjustments since the configuration was performed.We have (2) 10G ports per node (you can have 4) so all of the network, vMotion, storage, etc. traffic goes through the same nic. This hasn't been an issue for us and the 10G nics handle all the traffic quite well with no bottlenecks. In fact, we are still seeing 0ms read and write latency with 40% resource utilization.Use of Solution:Our Nutanix has been in production for 1 month.Deployment Issues:There was some sort of communication breakdown with the Nutanix SE and our reseller. I mentioned before the installation is done with a Nutanix SE due to the proprietary installation but I was not made aware of this until after I tried to perform the installation myself. Once I became aware (after reading a lot of documentation) and contacted Nutanix Support, the engineer who helped me was extremely knowledgeable and got the installation back on track.Stability Issues:No stability issues.Scalability Issues:No, however we do not have any short-term plans to scale out beyond our current Nutanix appliance.Customer Service:I have not needed to contact customer service.Technical Support:Outstanding on every level.Previous Solutions:We were using HP servers, switches, and SANs for our hypervisor solution. The hyper-converged infrastructure became a more attractive option since there is less to manage separately. The management portal (Prism) manages everything centrally and can be configured for your SNMP solution.Initial Setup:The initial setup is somewhat complex and needs to be coordinated with a support engineer. Given the amount of proprietary technology (NOS, features, and Nutanix has their own optional hypervisor solution (Acropolis)), it isn't surprising nor a frustration.Implementation Team:As I mentioned previously, the installation was done by me with the help of a Nutanix SE.Cost and Licensing Advice:This is a pricey solution considering it's essentially a fork lift upgrade but the features, redundancy, and performance made it the most attractive solution for us.Other Solutions Considered:We looked at Simplivity as well but decided on the Nutanix because it was a better fit for our VMware licensing. We were able to simply replace (4) of our existing VMware hosts with (4) Nutanix nodes in a single appliance.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. April 18, 2016

Rated 5 out of 5 by David Tan It has features that help us to manage it, such as one-click hypervisor and firmware upgrade, and we can store data efficiently with compression and deduplication. Valuable Features:* One-click hypervisor and firmware upgrade* Snapshots and clones* Compression and deduplication* Backup and disaster recoveryImprovements to My Organization:It's easy to manage with the one-click hypervisor and firmware upgrade.We can also store data more efficiently with compression and deduplication.Room for Improvement:I have nothing to suggest.Use of Solution:I've used it for two and a half years.Deployment Issues:No issues encountered.Stability Issues:No issues encountered.Scalability Issues:No issues encountered.Customer Service:It's good.Technical Support:It's good.Previous Solutions:We did, and we switched because Nutanix is easier to manage and configure.Initial Setup:It's simple, just a few clicks are needed to configure it.Implementation Team:We used a mixed team.Other Advice:You should look into this product if you are looking for a good piece of technology.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. September 30, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by Tommy Li It centralizes management, so we can build clouds anywhere, but they should replace all the hard drives with SSD. Valuable Features:All the software-defined, hyper-converged, and cloud-based infrastructure provide our network with VMs and storage.Improvements to My Organization:It centralizes management, so we can build clouds anywhere. Regardless of the hardware platform, it still works.Room for Improvement:The processing power is OK, but for the future it needs to be better. Replacing all the hard drives with SSD would dramatically improve performance.Stability Issues:* Very good compression* QoS is very goodScalability Issues:It's highly scalable because it's all in the cloud.Technical Support:We often use technical support, but usually we grab an account manager who sends an entire team.Initial Setup:It was very easy.Other Advice:The solution you choose will depend on your budget. If you want to build a hybrid cloud, and have a good balance between cost and performance, then Nutanix is good option.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. August 31, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by Kelvin Wong It controls data sets and metadata well with local read/write access and real-time distribution to other hosts, but it slows down in systems with large block sizes in random write. Valuable Features:* Shadow clone* Deduplication fingerprint on ingestImprovements to My Organization:The beauty of this product is that it is very intelligent in controlling the data set and metadata. It fully utilizes the memory, hard disk, and CPU, and leverage big data components such as a Cassandra database as a metadata database to hold each of the nodes for a redundancy issue if there's a node or disk failure.Each of the applications can perform data access in read and write locally, and also distribute a second copy of data to other hosts in real time, which ensures data will not be lost if there is a hard disk failure, and this avoids storage I/O bottleneck issues.Room for Improvement:When operating a system which has a large capacity and large block sizes in random write, the performance will slow down a little bit.Use of Solution:I've used it for two and a half years.Stability Issues:No issues encountered.Scalability Issues:No issues encountered.Customer Service:7/10.Technical Support:10/10 as Nutanix support provides all our hypervisor support.Previous Solutions:No, because no one is similar to Nutanix in using 100% software define storage.Initial Setup:It's very straightforward. It makes a complete workflow and software for operation. In fact, it's so easy it will make implementation engineers obsolete.Implementation Team:I implemtented it myself.Cost and Licensing Advice:It's very simple and cost effective.Other Solutions Considered:* VMware vSAN* HP CS200Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Partner August 19, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by Stephen Stetler I am now able to quickly configure a Cluster in minutes but if you do the design without appropriate cooling you will have stability issues. Valuable Features:* Ease of administration* Monitoring and alerting features through Prism Web UI* Acceleration of non-persistent VDI through the shadow clone feature* Localization of I/O makes boot and login storms a thing of the pastImprovements to My Organization:Rather than spend valuable consulting days setting up a SAN and carving out LUNs, setting up the hosts, etc., I am now able to quickly configure a Nutanix Cluster in minutes. I use the majority of my consulting time fine tuning the VDI and SBC deployment’s performance and policies which is the most valuable to the client.Use of Solution:I've been using Nutanix VCP NOS for two years.Deployment Issues:On one particular deployment, I found two issues with hardware; a bad disk drive, and a bad motherboard. Luckily, Nutanix support contacted me because they received the alerts at the same time I did and we were able to triage and replace the defective hardware prior to the roll-out.Stability Issues:Something to consider when designing Rackspace for Nutanix blocks, and other SuperMicro server hardware, is that you are effectively adding four computer nodes into a 2U space. When you stack multiple blocks together in a rack, the density of heat is considerable when compared to typical server hardware in the very same amount of space. If you do the design without appropriate cooling, yes, you will have issues with stability.Scalability Issues:Quite the opposite, really, this is the first time when scalability is not an issue. Adding another Nutanix node to a Cluster adds storage, memory and compute very easily. Nutanix scales very linearly, like some other converged solutions. Because it scales so linearly, it is important to choose your Nutanix model wisely so that you scale appropriately for the workload you are throwing at it.Customer Service:Customer service is fantastic.Previous Solutions:Prior to Nutanix, we, like everyone else, pieced together our solution using HP Proliant servers, and NetApp SAN storage. Between ordering, qualifying, unboxing, setup and configuration, the amount of time required to get the client up and running was huge. We had to have experts on shared storage and networking; a lot of time was spent doing tasks that didn’t directly translate into value for our clients. Switching to Nutanix flipped the value proposition around, and suddenly one technical person qualified in Nutanix was all that was needed. Our time to deployment was much faster, and both ours and our client’s costs went down.Initial Setup:Setup is very straightforward. Once racked and cabled, all I need is an IPv6 capable machine with a web browser. The Nutanix wizard guides me through the setup and configuration of the cluster in minutes.Implementation Team:I am the consultant providing the services.Other Advice:If you decide to deploy Nutanix in your organization, choose the team wisely. We were fortunate to have our own CTO, Mark Knouse, be awarded the NTC title. As Nutanix aggressively adds new features and ways to buy into the platform, and the Nutanix community grows, having a trusted team with NTCs that works directly with Nutanix with ensure your deployment is a success.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer:Premier Partner with Nutanix. May 7, 2015

Rated 3 out of 5 by Alfred Darby III While the performance is quite good, the initial setup and ongoing administration needed a little more development/maturing. Valuable Features:I valued the high performance I/O and the high availability (HA).Room for Improvement:This was a POC and due to the high cost of the solution we did not end up deploying the technology. Also the initial setup, and ongoing administration have room for improvement.Use of Solution:I used the Nutanix products in a Proof-of-Concept (POC) that we did for addressing performance issues for a Splunk installation. One of the issues was trying to get high I/O performance using VMware guests. Nutanix provided us with a possible solution for our needs. As a result, I was only exposed to the solution for about two to three months during the POC.Deployment Issues:With the assistance of a Nutanix resource, we had very little issues with the deployment of the hardware. Our biggest technical hurdle was the networking requirements in order to provide adequate bandwidth for the product.Stability Issues:We did not encounter any stability issues.Scalability Issues:We did not encounter an issues with scalability.Customer Service:I was very pleased with the level of customer service and support provided during the POC.Technical Support:The Nutanix resources provided to us were very knowledgeable about the product.Previous Solutions:This was a POC to look for a solution, but we did not have an equivalent solution in place.Initial Setup:The setup was complex and required Nutanix to provide a resource to assist with it. The networking requirements, storage/file system layout and rack space layout added to the level of complexity.Implementation Team:Nutanix provided a vendor team to assist with all facets of the POC implementation.Cost and Licensing Advice:As this was a POC there was no cost involved.Other Solutions Considered:No other products were being reviewed at the time of this POC but we chose not to implement it.Other Advice:This solution has many advantages, but comes with a cost in dollars and complexity, so make sure you are thorough in your requirements, and that this product meets and exceeds all your short term and long term needs, including your budget.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. April 29, 2015